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Quality Street

The Quality Street is a chocolate brand that for many British people is indicative of the Christmas period (along with Roses). There is always a box under the tree, and as in my case a communal tin on the desk at work.

The interesting thing is how the choice of chocolates divides people. From memory there are something like 8 different kinds, including fudge, toffee, nuts and orange flavoured varieties.

There are those that will only eat one or two kinds, and those like me that just stick their hand in for a random one. The most interesting though, are those that profess they do not like this one and they do not like that one, then they eat them anyway and confess that, actually, they are ok.

Houses

One issue that I can get quite heated about is house prices. This is very much a big topic in Britain, and it has become a fact of modern life for my contempories and me that we cannot afford to buy houses. I am sure that it has always been the case that houses were expensive, of course they were, and this is certainly not the first time that house prices have risen above the affordability level of most of the population. However, I think we are facing a significant shift in the ownership and availability of housing in the UK.

The BBC News has an article on the Abbey offering a mortgage at 5 times the joint salary of a couple. Large multiple mortgages are not uncommon, but this is the first major high street lender to do so. It looks like the traditional 3.5 times salary multiple has most definitly gone out of the window.  However, this does not make the houses any more affordable, just that you are tied to larger monthly payments.
I’m sure there are many complex reasons why house prices are continuing to rise. Personally I think the biggest issues are a lack of available properties (full stop), and an increase in buy-to-lets. Many people are releasing equity in their houses to fund a buy-to-let, or moving their money from more traditional investment schemes. This removes more properties from the market for first-time buyers and exacerbates the supply and demand economics.

Whether the property market ever settles to something more affordable I don’t know, but I can see a few possible scenarios evolving from this:

1. We have a two-tier property society: the upper tier own all the property and the lower tier rent from them.
2. Parents and relatives are expected to contribute massive financial backing to their offspring to buy houses. Unfortunately I can see this already with the media hyping an expectation to obtain large deposts from parents.
3. People don’t buy houses until well into their 30s, with the knock on effects of starting families later in life.